Eugenic Theory Research Articles

A Glittering Icon of Fascist Femininity: Trebisonda 'Ondina' Valla

This essay focuses on the second decade of the Italian Fascist regime through its emblematic symbol, Trebisonda 'Ondina' Valla. Valla gained first place in the 80 metre hurdles at the Berlin Olympics of 1936, and became the first world-class female athlete in Italian history, in spite of the generally backward condition of Italian women. In those years, a paternalistic and conservative society deeply discriminated against female participation in not only sport but also other cultural activities. The Catholic Church, medical expertise, eugenics theories and the fascist regime were all opposed to female competitive sport. The Church demanded female morality, modesty and domesticity while, the medical profession recommend only basic physical exercise for female health and motherhood. While promoting the myth of the New Italy as a modern nation, Fascism wished it to be inhabited by a traditional womanhood. Paradoxically, however, Mussolini supported Valla because she epitomized a dynamic fascism and brought Italian Fascism international visibility. The serendipitous value of Valla was that she encouraged young women to attempt to force open the bars of their political cage, and at the same time forced the fascist ideology to reconsider and reconstruct fascist principles in the interest of international propaganda. Thus while Valla was a political instrument of fascist purpose, she was also an agent of female emancipation. She was a political icon that also became a gender icon. In both roles she became a symbol of congratulation but also of confrontation, contradiction and paradox.

Eugenics and its Relevance to Contemporary Health Care

Recently there has been a revival of interest in the theory and practice of eugenics by both academics and lay people. The ongoing revolution in biology and the increasing ability to acquire genetic information has led to concerns about genetics being used again for sinister eugenic ends. Although the goals behind traditional eugenics - the minimization of disease and the improvement of human health - remain unchanged, the means by which these goals should be achieved have altered significantly. However, in debates about the impact of human genetic research, eugenics is sometimes viewed as a purely historical phenomenon and its relevance to the current situation is minimized. This article outlines the history of the eugenics movement, describes some eugenic practices, and explores why an appreciation of these historical debates is important for nurses.

Eugenics and its relevance to contemporary health care.

Recently there has been a revival of interest in the theory and practice of eugenics by both academics and lay people. The ongoing revolution in biology and the increasing ability to acquire genetic information has led to concerns about genetics being used again for sinister eugenic ends. Although the goals behind traditional eugenics--the minimization of disease and the improvement of human health--remain unchanged, the means by which these goals should be achieved have altered significantly. However, in debates about the impact of human genetic research, eugenics is sometimes viewed as a purely historical phenomenon and its relevance to the current situation is minimized. This article outlines the history of the eugenics movement, describes some eugenic practices, and explores why an appreciation of these historical debates is important for nurses.

Imperfect Conceptions: Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects, and Eugenics in China (review)

Reviewed by: Imperfect Conceptions: Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects and Eugenics in China Laurence Schneider (bio) Frank Dikotter . Imperfect Conceptions: Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects and Eugenics in China. London: Hurst and Co.; New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. 288 pp. Hardcover $27.50, ISBN 0-231-11370-6. Frank Dikotter is one of today's most imaginative and stimulating historians of modern Chinese thought and culture. The compact book under review is his third since 1992, and it shows him to be continuing his hot pursuit of a body of closely related issues on nation, race, gender, and eugenics that resonate from book to book. He also continues to find creative approaches to topics with fresh and unusual data and to exercise an astute, intuitive mode of analysis. This latest study also reveals the persistence of some rough-hewn writing that a reader could find trying and that could undermine some of the aforementioned qualities. (I note that this review is based on a copy of the "uncorrected proofs.") Broadly speaking, eugenics is the concern for improving the hereditary qualities of new generations of people. In the twentieth century, some have claimed that their eugenic theories and practices were science based. As Dikotter notes, however, "eugenics was not so much a clear set of scientific principles as a modern way of talking about social problems in biologising terms" (p. 4). Conventionally, a "positive" or "negative" approach is taken in the practice of eugenics. The former considers, for example, ways of making a family line or nation physically [End Page 73] stronger or more intelligent by determining who in the population has desirable characteristics and then having those people reproduce. Thus, Pan Guangdan (1898-1967), China's preeminent eugenicist, could seriously recommend in the 1930s that China would improve its government by breeding a pool of good administrators. This was to be accomplished through a program in which the best officials were selectively interbred. Negative eugenics focuses on the elimination of undesirable human qualities: disease, physical weakness, "low intelligence," and even behaviors like criminality, alcoholism, or "immorality." Dikotter's provocative approach to eugenics in China is in this "negative" realm, where he explores the larger implications of eugenic attitudes by way of literature addressing the problem of babies born with severe defects, or what the vernacular has called "anomalies" or "monsters." The literature in question is fascinating. Apparently quite extensive, it was written for popular audiences (as opposed to the educated elite), who sought guidance in eugenic matters. Dikotter pointedly seeks here to shift the study of eugenics from the level of the cultural elite to "informal, popular, anonymous eugenics supporters." He looks beyond institutional boundaries of formal organizations to see how "eugenics discourse permeated the concerns of many ordinary men and women" (p. 6). Dikotter's study is divided chronologically into three units: the first dealing with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the second with the twentieth century to 1949, and the last with the PRC up to the government's recently announced eugenic policies. All three sections are informed with one set of arguments that are in effect the real subjects of this book. The author argues that eugenics in China is itself a manifestation of some very old, persistent, pernicious cultural syndromes. First and fundamentally is "patrilineal culture" and second is a "holistic" way of thinking that perhaps is a reflection of that culture. In his narrative, Dikotter's usage of these terms is not based on sound initial definitions, and the further we read the more freighted the terms become. Be that as it may, patrilineal culture is seen as the source of an inimical subordination of individuals to collectivities, and especially the subordination of individuals' reproductive rights to the rights of the lineage. Thus, producing healthy male children is essential to the continuity of the lineage, and women are obliged to do what is required to achieve that end. Holistic thinking, Dikotter argues, "denies the existence of a disembodied and autonomous self" (p. 9). Not only does it demand that individuals be defined as part of a larger collectivity, it also requires the acknowledgment of an organic intimacy between individuals and natural or social environments. Further, "medical...

From state eugenics to private eugenics

Eugenics—or ‘the cultivation of a race’—is a concept dating from the latter part of the 19th century. It preceded the new science of genetics by merely 25 years. Negative eugenics stressed especially the exclusion of negative characteristics and was associated with the practice and theory of radical eugenics between the two World Wars. In order to redress ‘the decline of the race’, reinforcement by positive eugenics was also advocated. After the atrocities committed by the Nazis there was a lull in the practice and discourse of eugenics. More recent technical advances in assisted reproduction techniques and the genome project, however, have revived the eugenics debate. State eugenics and eugenics as an individual choice ought to be distinguished.

Ethical questions in the age of the new eugenics.

As a result of the publicly funded Human Genome Project (HGP), and an increasing number of private enterprises, a new form of eugenic theory and practice has emerged, differing from previous manifestations. Genetic testing has become a consumer service that may now be purchased at greatly reduced cost. While the old eugenics was pseudoscientific, the new eugenics is firmly based on DNA research. While the old eugenics focused on societal measures against the individual, the new eugenics emphasizes the family as a control agent. Eugenics is now voluntary, with the promise of abortion for those afraid of producing genetically damaged children. The ethical concepts of beneficence, avoidance of maleficence, autonomy, and equity are discussed in terms of aspects of the HGP. One major issue is the need for an ethical system available to health consumers that will empower them and assist in their biogenic decisions.

The Bard of Eugenics: Shakespeare and Racial Activism in the Third Reich

In April 1937, roughly midway between Hitler's appointment as Chancellor and the inception of the 'Euthanasia Programme', some of Germany's leading literary critics and beaux esprits attended an unusual exposition of nazi eugenic theory. The annual meeting of the German Shakespeare Society in Weimar provided the setting, Shakespeare's birthday the unlikely occasion. The event itself took the form of a paper with the title 'Maidens and Matrons in Shakespeare: A Practical Perspective', published subsequently in the Society's Jahrbuch for 1937.1 This article considers how this curious document ostensibly an exercise in literary reflection foreshadowed and facilitated Germany's deadly eugenic experiment. 'Maidens and Matrons' is a remarkable document for several reasons: first, because it highlights the often incongruous ways in which nazi ideology was disseminated; second, because it demonstrates that this was done as much through individual initiative as organized propaganda; third, because it reveals how complicity with the regime and its aims was gradually established even among sections of German society that had initially sought to keep nazism at arm's length; and fourth, because it demonstrates how such complicity provided the basis for the progressive escalation of nazi racial policy. Lastly, the document is remarkable in itself, as evidence of the degradation of German intellectual and cultural life in the Third Reich. The author of the paper in question, Hans FK. Giinther, was an influential academic figure in 1930s Germany; and though he held a doctorate in Germanistik,2 and had at various times dabbled in verse and drama, his name was not generally associated with literary criticism.3 It seems doubtful that in the normal course of events he would ever have been invited to address the high-minded circle of Bildungsbiirger that made up the German Shakespeare Society. The first thing about the paper, therefore, that deserves comment is its

Greek theories on eugenics.

With the recent developments in the Human Genome Mapping Project and the new technologies that are developing from it there is a renewal of concern about eugenic applications. Francis Galton...

Parents with learning disabilities: a review of the literature.

Parenting by learning disabled persons is a highly emotive issue, eliciting arguments from both extremes. Many of the arguments against such parenting have their basis in eugenic theory, whereas those in favour, often cite human rights declarations, and philosophies such as 'normalization'. This review of the literature describes the chronological development of theory on the subject, spanning 1900 to the present day. It has become clear that, whereas parents with learning difficulties may be more predisposed to having problems, they can indeed perform as adequate parents, given appropriate training and support. This paper traces the development of current theory, through an in-depth discussion of the available literature.

The educational impact of the eugenics movement

Although there is a growing literature on the Eugenics movement and historians have shown some interest in its impact on educational policy, there has been little attempt by historians to demonstrate its continuity throughout the 20th Century. There also has been little exploration of its linkages with scientific racism as it has developed in several societies (in particular North America) in recent years. This chapter argues that Eugenics never lost its hold on policy, in particular, the treatment of ethnic minorities, and can only be fully understood in the light of the ongoing concern for Eugenic theory. The author also suggests that the widespread influence of the Eugenics movement illustrates the communality of educational policy across the developed world and particularly across modern Europe.

Governing Mentalities: The Deportation of ‘Insane’ and ‘Feebleminded’ Immigrants Out of British Columbia From Confederation To World War II

AbstractThis paper chronicles the role of British Columbian provincial authorities and medical practitioners in engineering the deportation of psychiatrically disordered and cognitively disabled immigrants out of the province between Confederation and 1939. Approximately 750 mental patients were removed from BC during the 1920s and 1930s alone, and more than 5000 had been deported from the country as a whole by the outbreak of World War II. With the use of provincial and federal government records and correspondence, institutional documents, print media clippings and patient files, I probe the professional practices and discourses that fuelled this movement to banish asylum inmates. Across these seven decades, medical authorities, in alliance with bureaucrats and various anti-immigration forces, succeeded in assembling a powerful and efficient system for screening out and expelling those new Canadians who ostensibly failed to meet the mental standards for Canadian citizenship. Bolstered by theories of eugenics and race betterment, and drawing on public fears about the unregulated influx of aliens and the associated scourge of madness, officials turned to deportation as an expedient means for ridding hospitals of their least desirable denizens. I argue more generally that the deportation of ‘insane’ and other ‘unfit’ immigrants was nourished by the flood ofnativist, rac(ial)ist, exclusionist, eugenist, and mental hygienist thinking that dominated British Columbian and Canadian political and public culture throughout this ‘golden age’ of deportation.

Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South.

This study explores the theory and practice of eugenics in the American South. The author shows how the quest for strong bloodlines expressed itelf in state laws and public policies, many of which remain controversial to the present day - such as state control over sexuality and reproduction, the rights of disabled people and of ethnic minorities, and legal questions raised by new discoveries in genetics and medicine. The book describes how the seemingly broad-based eugenics movement was in fact a series of distinct campaigns for legislation at the state level - campaigns that could often be traced to the efforts of a small group of determined individuals. Explaining how these efforts shaped state policies, it places them within a broader cultural context by describing the workings of southern State legislatures, the role played by women's clubs and the distinctly Southern cultural forces that helped or hindered the implementation of eugenic reforms.

Genetics and medicine in the United States, 1800 to 1922

This book investigates the relationship between developments in the science of genetics and the clinical practice of medicine in the United States. Rushton shows how physicians first doubted, then slowly accepted, the relevance of Mendel's work for human heredity. The modern synthesis of cytology and genetics, which explained the inheritance of specific characters by the segregation of genes on the chromosomes of egg and sperm, was widely discussed in the medical community by 1910. By 1915, physicians began to recognize that the transmission of such human disorders as haemophilia, Huntington chorea, and Tay-Sachs disease fit the Mendelian model. Yet by the early 1920s, Rushton explains, progress had reached a near standstill. First, physicians were becoming convinced that genetic illness was relatively rare compared with such bacteriological diseases as tuberculosis, which posed a far more visible threat to public health. In addition, many physicians permitted their ethical objections to eugenics theories, increasingly embraced by genetics researchers, to colour their judgment of the research itself.

Fetal alcohol syndrome at the turn of the 20th century. An unexpected explanation of the Kallikak family.

At the turn of the 20th century, studies of a family known in the literature as the Kallikaks were used to document the hereditary nature of mental retardation, poverty, and antisocial behavior. This family was said to authenticate eugenic theory, which states that heritable characteristics carried by individuals on "independent unit characters are unalterable determinants of behavior and performance. A review of the original Kallikak data, however, suggests that in utero exposure to alcohol rather than heredity contributed significantly to the transgenerational learning failure seen throughout the Kallikak pedigree. However, eugenic theory was so thoroughly accepted that the promotion and acceptance of "hereditary feeblemindedness" as the principal cause of the developmental problems in the affected offspring smothered the research efforts on in utero effects of alcohol until long after the eugenic concepts were abandoned later in the century.

Eugenic theory and the thematics of sin

Eugenic theory and the thematics of sin

Duchenne de Boulogne

Abstract In this 1986 article ‘The Body and the Archive’, Alan Sekula argues that the Essays on Physiognomy of Johann Casper Lavater, which were published in the 1770s, helped to establish a belief that was augmented and elaborated during the nineteenth century through the use of photography.1 To give an example, Francis Galton based much of his photographic work on the premise that the surface of the body could provide an observer with clues about the inner character of an individual, a virtually timeless supposition that Lavater had revived and systematized. Of course, nineteenth-century physiognomic studies aimed to corroborate a wide range of assumptions about the social and biological status of the individual, which may be seen as responses to the socioeconomic needs of the time — Galton's eugenic theories are generally cast against the background of growing, impoverished urban populations in the second half of the century.2 Nevertheless, Lavater's original delineation of the subject of physiognomy may provide us with a valuable starting point for the study of nineteenth-century work in that area, and this holds true when we come to examine the work of Duchenne of Boulogne, whose Le Mçcanisme de la Physionomie Humaine was published in Paris in 1862.

Foundation for fascism: The new eugenics movement in the United States

J. Philippe Rushton recently gained widespread publicity in North America with his controversial eugenic theories of racial difference. Barry Mehler shows that his ideas coincide with, and are supported by, the wealthy organization promoting eugenics in the US today, the Pioneer Fund, and the journal Mankind Quarterly, and scrutinizes the political and academic influence of those bodies.

The conceptual neutering of gender and the criminalization of sex

Thirty years ago the term gender was borrowed from philology for use in sexological psychology in a paper on hermaphroditism (Money, 1955). As originally defined, gender role consists of both introspective and the extraspective manifestations of the concept. In general usage, the introspective manifestations soon became separately known as gender identity. The acronym, G-I/R, being singular, restores the unity of the concept. Without this unity, gender role has become a socially transmitted acquisition, divorced from the biology of sex and the brain. Sex and gender have been partitioned between body and mind, respectively. The desexualization of gender is in accord with the Zeitgeist of contemporary sexual politics together with victimology and an expanding criminalization of sex. The funding of sexological research is being diverted to victimology, which is, de facto, a branch of law enforcement. Victimologists--and sexological professionals among them--are vulnerable to a backlash of being themselves criminalized. This happens as a result of false accusations of various types of malpractice, including sexual abuse of clients, especially children. Under Hitler, there was an historical parallel when the destruction of sexology was effected by the application of the theory of social eugenics and racial purity with sexologists had endorsed. They were among the first of Hitler's victims.

Critique [of Racial Intelligence Testing and the Mexican People

Educational institutions are representative microcosms of the society. If the society segregates, exploits, and excludes racial groups, then it can be expected that educational institutions will follow suit. The intelligence testing of the 1920s and 1930s was an academic response to eugenics theories and to contemporary political-economic policies related to immigration, miscegenation, and segregation. As Gonzalez concludes, the creation of intelligence tests and their application were not only an apologia but also a means to maintain the status quo in the society.

Biology and Culture: Science and Society in the Eugenic Thought of H. J. Muller

ganization. In general, this paper will deal with the development of Mendelian genetics in the 20th century. To prune the subject down to a more manageable size, I propose to focus on the growth of scientific theories of eugenics during this time, particularly in the work of Hermann Joseph Muller (1890-1967). There are many ways in which the rapid growth of Mendelian theory during the first two decades of the 20th century has influenced our culture. Deducing patterns of heredity has made possible human genetic prognostication, and thus a more thorough understanding of the nature and treatment of hereditary disease. Extremely rapid progress in the science of plant and animal breeding (for example, in developing the modern-day strains of wheat) could not have occurred without an understanding of the laws of heredity. In the use of genetic information to improve the quality of the human hereditary stock, however, modern genetics has reached its potentially most powerful impact on modern culture. For the historian, Muller's investigations in genetics and in the problems of planned human breeding present an ample opportunity to study the interaction between scientific and social views. In